Devil in Dover

On Monday, I had the chance to go to Cambridge to hear a lecture during in a series celebrating Darwin. (Happy Darwin Day everybody!) I was able to hear a former colleague of mine named Lauri Lebo who has written a book about the Dover intelligent design trial. The book is really good (in my very biased opinion) and I would highly recommend it to any of my friends and family who would like to know more about what I went through with the trial.

http://www.amazon.com/Devil-Dover-Insiders-Small-town-America/dp/1595582088/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1234520430&sr=8-1

It was a reunion of sorts and I also got to see Cyndi Sneath, one of the parents who was a plaintiff in the trial. In addition to hearing Lebo speak, I had the unexpected pleasure of witnessing the performance art/lecture/hip-hop stylings of Baba Brinkman, a Canadian who made his name rapping Chaucer's Cantebury Tales. He rapped a whole series based on Darwin's Origin of the Species. (yeah, you read that right). It sounds kind of ridiculous and it kind of was, but it was also kind of brilliant. For one thing, Mr. Baba really knows his stuff and has a pretty sophisticated grasp of evolutionary theory. For another thing, he used Australopithecus in his rhymes. Also, learning about sexual selection in rap form is more entertaining than lecture form. Afterwards, we went out to get some food and I went with Lebo, Sneath, Brinkman, a very intense man who came to the lecture with his wife and had a very strong stutter, and a peevish English biology professor who put the lecture tour together. Here is Brinkman doing one of his first performances of his opening rap (I saw a more polished version, but this gives you a taste):

Here is a link that shows some more about Brinkman, Lebo and Pallen (the English microbiologist that put the tour together)

http://roughguidetoevolution.blogspot.com/